A CHILD'S PRAYER
The boy's room was furnished in the manner of the curate's chamber—which, indeed, was severe and chaste enough: for the curate practiced certain monkish austerities not common to the clergy of this day. It was a white, bare little room, at the top of the house, overlooking the street: a still place, into which, at bedtime, no distraction entered to break the nervous introspection, the high, wistful dreaming, sadly habitual to the child when left alone in the dark. But always, of fine mornings, the sun came joyously to waken him; and often, in the night, when he lay wakeful, the moon peeped in upon the exquisite simplicity, and, discovering a lonely child, companionably lingered to hearten him. The beam fell over the window-sill, crawled across the floor, climbed the bare wall.
There was a great white crucifix on the wall, hanging in the broad path of the moonlight. It stared at the boy's pillow, tenderly appealing: the head thorn-crowned, the body drawn tense, the face uplifted in patient agony. Sometimes it made the boy cry.
"They who sin," he would repeat, "crucify the dear Lord again!"
It would be very hard, then, to fall asleep....